“Hey, check this out.”

  -Haydn ‘The Handless’ Weber, moments before showing off his self-designed schema

  For so many people, the only spells they could cast were cantrips. An entire day’s mana could be lost after only a few unoptimised spells and all they had to show for it were weak effects. Most commonly they might produce a scatter-shot of pebbles or light a small flame, while the lucky-few might even help plants grow or heal the sick. They were supposed to be simple and tiring things, lacking most of their utility or potency without the structure of a schema to guide them.

  Dahlia let her mana flow and an agonized scream followed.

  It was just a fraction of her own mana: it shouldn’t have been much. She had found her mana naturally divided, eager to be used in distinct parts and so all Dahlia did was let one third flow. It was the part of her mana she preferred the most —prevalent, thick like molasses, and smelling of mint, pine, and moss— but as the floodgates opened, it ripped through her body in an instant, saturating every part of her flesh until she couldn’t feel anything other than that same viscous feeling roiling everywhere beneath her skin.

  And then it pushed through.

  It emerged in disorganised clumps at first, permeating through thin sections of skin or where mana channels were densest and, where the mana saturated, wood and bark followed. It didn’t tear through skin —she thanked the gods for that— but still the bark clung to her, pulling skin taught as it anchored itself, spreading across her body faster and faster until every inch was covered and encased like an exoskeleton-made-coffin. The flow of mana didn’t care for comfort or design, not as it locked joints in place nor as it grew tight against her eyes and into her mouth. That wasn’t even the worst of it.

  At a certain point, the wooden shell stopped growing thicker but, to replace it, almost in spite of the already overwhelmed girl, buds formed. Leaves, thin yet razor sharp, sprouted as small twigs began to grow and take shape, sinking anchors into Dahlia’s flesh as if to use her own body as soil to take root. It was shallow, but even still she screamed and it only grew worse as vines began to sprout as well.

  Dahlia didn’t know the biology behind it —she couldn’t be bothered to focus on anything at that moment— but along her digits, where the mana’s flow cut off at concentrated points, that’s where the worst occurred. Vines —weak, fragile, and tendril-like— grew out and she could feel them. Suckers a knuckle’s length grew to hand spans and then strides, growing at a rapid rate with each and every minutia more mind-rending than the last. It was like the vines were bound to her own nerves, raw, exposed, and forcibly brushing against everything as they continued to lengthen. It was only because of that agony that the girl had even let the suffering go as long as she did; she couldn’t focus —couldn’t even think— for the longest time as everything in her sensorium screamed of a thousand tortures at once.

  She couldn’t tell how long it took until she'd gathered her wits enough to finally stop the mana’s flow but by then the damage was done. Dahlia was trapped, tender, and scared; hyperventilating within the living coffin she had formed and partially fused to. Every twitch sent a new wave of anguish through her while each breath reminded her of just how dangerously full her mouth had gotten as wood and moss uncaringly grew, forming into a gag of plant-matter that almost sealed her mouth shut entirely.

  What followed was an exercise of patience and pain tolerance as she struggled to break free. The wood, she was happy to learn, grew punky and porous; disconcertingly soft and half rotten on the inside while the outer bark was brittle and paper-thin. It was that fact alone that allowed the girl to manage her escape, tearing away swaths of wood at a time while wincing as the anchor-points tugged and tore at her skin. A part of her mildly noted how her dress was ruined —ripped in dozens of places and stained with both rot and blood— she struggled to imagine how her father would manage to recoup his finances but the thought was hardly cogent. Dahlia could feel her thoughts fraying, only now coming down from the adrenal high that accompanied being buried alive in one’s own magic or feeling it burrow beneath their skin. ‘Shaken’ would perhaps be something of an understatement for how she felt, and yet she was continuously reminded how things could always worsen.

  She eyed the vines sprouting from her, growing at the end of each digit and, unlike the wooden carapace, the vines were connected firm and deep. The mere act of having them shift or drag sent waves of pain through the girl so intense that it was enough to make her desperate and irrational. Without thinking —without even pausing to consider how bad it could be— she focussed on the first offender that grabbed her attention and bit down on a vine on her thumb.

  It was soft. It was fragile. It should have been severed quick and easy, but human teeth are dull and the vine —the little bundle of angry sensitive nerves— screamed as her teeth crushed and tore rather than cleanly cut. Dahlia couldn’t even remember what came after, only that she went nearly blind from the pain of it all and now lay there on the ground, whimpering from an ache that wouldn’t leave and only now realizing her mouth tasted of fresh bile. She wanted to sob but it came out as a laugh instead, crazed and scared and in so much pain. Nearly half a grain passed before she recovered enough to notice that the vine, at least, was gone. She ached though, her thumb throbbing at the memory of what was once there and there were still nineteen other vines that remained.

  She tried not to think about it too hard. Not the pain, nor the absurdity of it all. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen, not unless someone tried to use a botched schema, and yet here she was, aching, shivering, and terrified of having to repeat what just happened again. That last thought was likely what led to her intentionally ignoring the vines altogether.

  “Ok.” She tried not to startle at the sound of her own voice or how frail she sounded in that moment. “Alright, this is… this is fine. It’s probably even a good sign! Just, uhm, yeah. Without any more mana flowing into them they should die off on their own, that’s right. They’ll wither away or I’ll stop feeling things from them after a bit; I just need to wait it out. So, I guess that means… I just experiment with the other types of mana I have?”

  Another laugh bubbled up out of her only to transform into a manic fit of giggles. She could feel so much mana within her still —the expense of mana she expected from the cantrip had hardly occurred at all— and even through the haze of adrenaline and pain, she could feel that ache of needing to cast more. Her body needed her to expend her mana, else her discomfort grow to suffering. A part of her even craved using her magic more and, after what had just happened, she knew that impulse was fueled by madness. Still, she craved it nonetheless. She thirsted for more ways to use her mana, more ways to experience magic of her own, and more ways to distract her from everything that threatened to overwhelm her.

  So rather than tearing away at the next vine, or patiently waiting things out and giving herself a chance to recover, she again let mana flow though and this time erred for a fraction that felt… different.

  If the mana from before felt like honey, what she used now was like tar — so viscous it struggled to flow, yet with a thin nearly vapour-like sensation to it all. It came slower than before, less like a roiling geyser and more akin to the steady flow of lava, Dahlia could almost savour the taste of it as it began to seep to the surface. It was the source of the licorice she noted before, pungent yet accompanied by something subtler as well, almost medicinal in nature. The more she focussed on the synesthesia, the more it made her teeth tingle and throat close, and that sensation alone almost made her stop channeling the mana further, but then it took hold. Vapour roiled out from pores in her skin and from every orifice on her face, pooling out as a thick black fog that gathered and roiled across every surface it touched. It was almost hypnotizing to watch how the fumes moved: and then everything went dark.

  At first all Dahlia noticed was losing her sight, only noticing how her vision was darkening once it was too late and complete darkness overtook her. It only took moments longer, however, for her to realise that her eyes weren’t the only things affected. The throbbing, aching pain of the vines had stopped at some point, though she was too distracted to pinpoint exactly when, and the sound of crackling dead pine needles beneath her was gone as well. Even the synesthesia had seemingly left, leaving the girl in a state of almost complete sensory deprivation that only continued to grow stronger with each passing moment.

  Proprioception, she was finding, was the next thing beginning to fade and there was something horrific that came with that that the other missing senses failed to replicate. She could feel her body move, even if everything else was gone. She could feel her mana channels too; how they tensed and flexed in order to control the flow of mana in her body. But gradually, ever-so-slowly, even that was beginning to lose its clarity. All it took was noticing that for her to shut off the flow once again but, again, the effects lingered.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  There was something almost comical, she found, that came from the rapid shift in her experience. Only moments earlier she had been in agony and yet now she couldn’t even feel the pain that had been driving her mad. It took a moment for Dahla to fully process the implications of that but, the moment she did, the girl didn’t hesitate. She could already feel the worst of the numbing effects leaving, but it would still be enough; without another moment wasted she began to rip away the vines that still clung to her. Even now she could feel the faint twinge of pain through the fog of sensory deprivation and a part of her wondered if she might even be damaging the nerves themselves, but she didn’t stop, refusing to let what-ifs stop herself from being free from the torment that would have waited for her had she just done nothing.

  It wasn’t until another half-grain passed that the numbness faded enough for her to feel the aftereffects. A throbbing numbness ached at the tip of each digit but the girl couldn’t bring herself to care. With so much adrenaline pumping through her veins along with riding the high that came from knowing all of the worst effects were behind her, Dahlia couldn’t help but feel giddy. The initial fear was gone along with the pain, and the reward she got for it all was the discovery of two unusually potent cantrips. They weren’t functional at all —not really— but the intensity behind them already had her elated.

  “That was two out of three as well…” She spoke to herself in a mumble, missing her precious plants back home but too used to speaking aloud to just give up on the habit. “Considering the effects, it’s fairly safe to assume that my mana is naturally divided into my aspect’s three attributes as well. Nature for the first test, darkness for the second, which leaves the third being… spacial?”

  She chewed on the thought, not seeing the mistake at first but near-certain that something was off.

  “I wish I’d had the chance to do proper research on specialised schema and how they interact with my aspect’s attributes, but that’s not the kind of information a barony just keeps in its library, at least not to any larger scale. If I had to guess though… If the last part of my mana is exclusively spacial then I feel like I’m missing something. The hallucination I had back during my awakening wasn’t just the act of being misplaced, it was being turned around and anxious and confused and, if these three forms of mana I have access to are supposed to be my magic’s overarching building blocks… that emotional component is missing.

  “Emotion affecting magic is typically associated with darkness so I would have expected those effects to be included in the numbing cantrip. If not though… my third type of mana might be the concept of being lost as a whole?” Again she mulled over the thought, comparing it to what else she knew and came up wanting. “I feel that makes sense, but this isn’t a part of magic people talk about enough. Commoners use cantrips constantly so it matters more to them but, because schemas can dismantle aspects into more easily utilised building blocks, scholars tend to focus more on the classical attributes instead of whatever this hodgepodge that I have is. The theory should check out though and… fuck it. Spacial magic is scary, but of all the varieties to test, the kind that makes me lose my sense of direction has to be one of the better ones.”

  She took a deep breath. Then another, trying to psyche herself up even as her body shook uncontrollably.

  “Fuck me, this is stupid isn’t it? I tested my luck twice and both times I hardly managed to recover safely, and now I’m just jumping into a third try?” Her eyes trailed down her arms — hands shaking, fingers twitching, nails slick with blood from wounds she didn’t remember feeling. The girl cracked a grin, eyes wild and flinty as she balled her fists in defiance of it all. “Alright. Guess we’re being stupid. This’ll be the last chance to test for a while so I may as well make it all count.”

  And for one last time, Dahlia let the dam restraining her mana crack open and her third type of mana surged. It slid through mana channels fast and smooth, like liquid lacking mass or surface tension. The feeling was cold, accompanied by the scent of petrichor and the sweet saline taste of tears. There was something far less structured to the sensations this time: less grounded and more conceptual. The rational part of her, shivering in the corner of her mind, desperately begged to stop the flow before it was too late. Unfortunately, she was well past the point of no return.

  The vertigo struck first, like burst eardrums and looking off cliffs and suddenly stopping after spinning for too long, the world lost all form, direction, and meaning. Euclidean space was but a feeble suggestion that remained on the periphery of her senses, as if to merely pay lip service to reality’s typical form. The spinning only grew worse; the more she tried to focus, the more intense it got and already Dahlia could feel her body losing the fight to stay in control. Nausea taunted her even as she began to lose sense of which direction her limbs should move. She went to support herself only to land face first into the ground, coughing and sputtering all the while.

  Next came the fear. The anxiety of being confused. The dread of losing control. The terror of the slow realisation that she was stranded, alone, and lost in a way that no one could help her. It amplified the other effects, making her scrambling more desperate as nailbeds throbbed as she clawed at the ground and her body bruised as she flailed and writhed. The greater her desperation, the worse the anxiety and terror became, superseding all rationale as she felt herself growing more akin to a terrified beast than a person: all desperation and id.

  It was the vomit that actually snapped her out of it. The twisting vertigo was too much for her, leaving her heaving and nearly drowning in her own bile, only for the desperate part of her that urged her to survive reminded Dahlia to close her mana channels and curl into a ball and choke and weep.

  The world didn’t stop spinning immediately, but that was ok: Dahlia had no desire to move. The fear and anxiety never truly left, but that was also fine: those emotions were already close bedfellows to the girl regardless.

  Dahlia was a trembling broken mess when she finally moved, though she had no sense for how long it had been. Two knuckles she supposed? Perhaps closer to an hour? Her body was cold and stiff from remaining still on the hard ground and in the night air. She ached in ways she wasn’t familiar with; felt broken in new ways too. She didn’t want to move at all at first, not until a pair of nobles had snuck off into the garden just a tad too close to Dahlia for comfort. Newly awakened to certain allures she certainly was, but the girl had little interest in lingering to overhear the rendezvous of the pair.

  And so she pulled herself up, stumbling and struggling, but managing to stand all-the-same. Moving at all was something of a battle, but the desire to leave the area combined with her newly discovered dehydration and desperate thirst convinced Dahlia to slowly head back to the ballroom, step by agonizing step. She was thankful, at the very least, for her familiarity with more simplistic pains. What her cantrips had done to her were far outside of her parent’s typical torments, but the residual pain? That she was much better acquainted with and, as she continued to walk and some of the stiffness left her, the girl almost felt some approximation of normal, if somewhat damaged. Compared to how she was earlier, she could almost be considered in good health, all things considered!

  It was perhaps that exact appreciation that led the girl to re-enter the ballroom without seriously considering the state she was in. Hair in shambles, dress torn, stained, and bloody, and every part of her scratched or bruised in some way, it would have been a miracle if no one noticed her. As it happened, miracles were for other people. Instead, hundreds of eyes affixed to her almost immediately. It was enough for her to freeze, uncertain what to do and too rattled to be able to think on her feet, Dahlia could only try to avoid breaking down entirely as she felt the weight of the room land on her. And then a different weight fell on her as well. Soft, warm, and heavy — a cloak was draped over her shoulders and a wide hood was pulled over her mess of hair.

  “Gods, please tell me she didn’t just leave you like this.”

  Dahlia jumped, eyes flicking to the source of the voice and suddenly feeling oh-so-small and out of place. The woman before her was gorgeous and Dahlia’s new-found sexuality made itself known a little too eagerly. The woman towered over her but was far from imposing; if anything, she could only be described as soft. Loose curls of auburn hair framed a face that seemed to refuse losing its baby fat, her rounded and freckled cheeks making the woman appear younger than she truly was. Her eyes, lips, body… just about everything about her looked enticingly soft and Dahlia could feel the shame mounting as she kept getting distracted by that fact. Cheeks burning, she was more than happy to find distractions.

  First of all and what was certainly most notable, the woman was a beast-kin of some kind —rare in high society events like this one— and, while the girl couldn’t determine the bloodline by sight, the bovine resemblance was clear. Floppy velvet ears partially poked out from the woman’s hair accompanied by a pair of horns not much higher. The way she held herself also suggested digitigrade legs, though her dress hid any details. What it didn’t hide however, was what the dress itself represented: formal but less elaborate than other guests, while made from red and black fabrics and stitched with silver thread, it rapidly became clear that this wasn’t just some random attendee of the debutante. Then the woman’s words came to mind again and Dahlia snapped out of her defense mechanism of freezing in place.

  “No! Uhm, no, she didn’t— I mean— she…,” Dahlia eased out a breath and tried to let some of the tension leave her. “Her Grace did leave, but she did nothing but treat me kindly while we were together. I’m sorry for worrying you…?”

  She noticed then, now that her initial fluster had left, that there was a tightness in the woman’s eyes. The way she held herself was proper, but despite the kindness of offering a cloak, she seamed… standoffish; maybe even cold. It was as if she was struggling with her own manners, taking a few seconds for the affectation of a polite smile to finally force its way to her face. After a wick passed though, the woman curtsied, head bowing low and deferential.

  “I apologise for not introducing myself sooner; it’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Liontáriou. This humble servant is Bessie Satarescu, head housemaid of Via??vár and lady-in-waiting to Her Grace the Archduchess of Amarei.” She broke formality, just slightly, as her head tilted up and those large gorgeous eyes looked at Dahlia with what she was beginning to think was disdain. “If I may be so bold, would you grant me this dance?”

  Hi y'all, I hope you're having a wonderful day today! For those who missed it, the patreon is ahead by a decent margin and the beginning of arc 3 Pyrrhic Dreams is starting to be released this week! (I am excited). In other news... I planned to keep the etymology lesson short today and failed miserably, oh well.

  Today I'll just go over a name that comes up in the chapter: Satarescu. Now, the suffix -escu is very popular in Romanian last names and is often applied to patronymic names, similar to -son or -sen seen in Scandinavian last names and such. Unlike those names though, -escu can also refer to relation to profession or roles. Popescu would be a family of a priest, for example. In this case, Satarescu implies relation to satara?i (something that can be explained at a different time). For today, we'll just stick to the name itself with Satarescu approximately pronounced Sa-ta?-es-koo.

  It's the case with everything I do like this, but if you know better than myself, please feel free to let me know if there is a better and more intuitive way to present this. Similarly, I am not a speaker of any of the dialects I use so I get so much information from google. That's bound to lead to inaccuracies but also it means you can hear it for yourself. This won't be true for all languages I use unfortunately, but if I provide a language origin then you can try putting it into google translate and there is a button to have the widget pronounce the word to you. It'll do it even for fake words like this so it can be pretty useful!

  Anyways, if you read my ramble, I hope you enjoyed and I hope you enjoyed the chapter even more!

  If you're enjoying what you see and want to read ahead, I do have a Patreon that will maintain eight chapters in advance of what is public. If that interests you, you can find a link to it

  And if you're interested in talking to me about the novel or if you'd like to join a community of other delightful readers, I'd be happy to see you over at my Discord. You can find the link

  And as always, I hope you're having a wonderful day!